Disc harrow or bush hog

[Texasmark]

I live in the desert and due to our continuing drought (until this year), there has been little native growth. This year due to unusual rain, the desert turned green and the weeds grew like crazy. It's like a carpet out there. Then the rain ended and the heat came and everything dried up to a nice grey color.

My main concern is wildfire. The dry brush will remain this way through the end of the year and the next rainy season. It is a disaster waiting to happen.

My question is which would be better to reduce the fuel potential, a disc harrow or a bush hog. The vast majority is light brush less than 24" high. I will be pulling either with my 30HP B7800.

I can't speak for your situation but around here, before the county instigated (great idea) burn ban, farmers would burn off their (wheat mainly) fields to clear them for the next crop. They would take a disc harrow and make a couple of laps around the perimeter of the field turning up raw soil for a distance of about 25 feet and burn away......course they probably had a tractor sitting with the disc they used to do the field in the first place and will be back on the field with it when the fire extinguishes.

For me, you may get better results, hogging first to chop the crop into small pieces that will allow the disc to better turn it under...would depend on the length of the stems and durability....ala if the disc blades could cut the stems as they are covered so that the discs could sink deep enough to get some dirt to cover the crop.

 

[Ford850]

A strip of mowed and condensed layer of dry material from a BH will not slow a fire. I'd use a disk to get rid of the dry fuel.

 

[madhouse]

I vote for neither and or both. A Brush Hog will not remove the fuel. With a "carpet" of vegetation a disk will not properly turn the soil over.

A disk ripper is the perfect tool for this. It has a row of disk blades to cut up the dead vegetation and then has ripper teeth that will turn some of the soil on top of the vegetation.

Short of that I'd use a plow, particularly a chisel plow (sometimes refereed to as a cultivator) which will turn some of the soil over to minimize the fuel source and leave some vegetation on top to minimize erosion.

Brush hogging first will make it easier for whatever tillage equipment you can find to turn the soil and bury some of the fuel.

 

[kevin37b]

Roundup , disc .

 

[Gary Fowler]

Roundup , disc .

He doesn't need roundup, the foliage is already dead from drought as he mentioned in the first post.

If you have the equipment, bushhog it then disc it in. A disc will do the job by itself but may take several passes to knock down larger bushes. As already mentioned, just bush hogging it wont get rid of the flammable material.